Macron rations public appearances
PARIS — U.S. President Trump tweets five times a day and regularly gives extended interviews. Since Emmanuel Macron became president of France last month, voters have barely heard from him.
Macron has had one short conversation with a newspaper, left tweeting to his communications team and avoided direct contact with the traditional media. The glimpses the French public has had of its new leader have largely been confined to set-piece events with foreign dignitaries, tightly controlled speeches and made-forFacebook video clips.
Pollsters say the approach is set to give him a majority in the National Assembly Sunday. The question is whether it will keep voters on his side once he gets down to running the country.
“Rarity will be difficult to maintain in the age of social media,” said Philippe Moreau Chevrolet, a communications consultant and professor at the Sciences Po institute in Paris. “It has worked very well during this very particular period. The risk is that it won’t work for governing. Macron himself has proved one thing — the electorate is very volatile.”
While the styles of the U.S. and French presidents are as different as their ages, their politics and their backgrounds, both have scorned conventional wisdom on political communication after victorious campaigns that were widely dismissed at the outset.
In Macron’s case, the strategy hinges on rationing his public appearances to add weight to his words on the rare occasions that he does speak.
A recent survey by OpinionWay projected that approach will see the president’s party win a majority of at least 300 in the 577-seat legislature after the runoff vote this weekend.
But his ways have alienated one group that his predecessors worked hard to keep on side: the French media.
Within hours of his inauguration, Macron’s team raised hackles by trying to cherry-pick the journalists who would accompany him on a visit to troops in Mali. The labor ministry has launched a legal investigation into a leak. And last week Justice Minister Francois Bayrou tried to bully news organizations into ignoring his possible misuse of European Parliament funds.
“Does the new executive have a problem with the press?” Liberation, Agence France-Presse, BFM TV and dozens of other media asked in an opinion piece Tuesday that listed a variety of run-ins with the government. When it comes to freedom of information, they “opt to apply pressure, take legal action and question motives.”
The new president’s strategy is based on techniques devised by Jacques Pilhan, a Communist poker player and communication guru who worked for Francois Mitterrand, the Socialist who dominated French politics in the 1980s and was nicknamed “The Sphinx” for his long periods of public silence.